


Gravity and angels

by FancyTrinkets



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Anxious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Blood and Injury, Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Doubt, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Secular humanist author writes a God they find sympathetic and also interesting, She/Her Pronouns For God (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:09:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22552288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyTrinkets/pseuds/FancyTrinkets
Summary: It's been a year since the world didn't end, and that calls for a celebration. Gifts, picnics, and tender lovemaking are all part of the plan. But Crowley and Aziraphale's plans get thwarted when God shows up to borrow a book, test their faith, and answer some questions for once.Written for the Good Omens Big Bang with art bykatartstrophe.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 145
Kudos: 541
Collections: Good Omens Big Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The stunningly beautiful art for this story was created by katartstrophe, who you can and should follow: [katartstrophe on tumblr](http://katartstrophe.tumblr.com/) and also [katartstrophe on Twitter](https://twitter.com/katartstrophe). 
> 
> This fic has been beta read by the wonderful, thoughtful, and talented [hollow-head](http://hollow-head.tumblr.com/), whose time and feedback has helped me improve this story so much from where it began. 
> 
> The content warning is in place for vivid descriptions of wounds (though personally I don't think they're all that graphic, I do want to be careful here for readers): Crowley gets a small cut and he remembers past wounds while reflecting on pain and the nature of God. Michael impales the Great Beast, and a bunch of immortals get slain — but only in a vision.

Aziraphale holds a cup of tea, warm in hand, and watches the steam rise. He takes a sip, tastes bitter tannins beneath the tempering sweetness of the milk. It's a simple pleasure.

The bookshop is closed today. In its stillness, the only sound is his breath, which moves through him like a meditative prayer. He can almost forget that he's anxious.

He drinks the last of his tea just as the door opens and Crowley arrives bearing flowers and a box of chocolates. Aziraphale leaves his teacup on the windowsill and crosses the shop to greet him. 

"How was it?" he asks. "The bandstand, I mean, not the chocolatier or– or the flower shop." 

He tries to make light of it, but his voice wobbles, betrays some uncharted emotion he thinks might be shame. 

"I didn't stay long. A few minutes." Crowley sets the chocolates on a side table and hands over the flowers. "For you," he says. 

Aziraphale takes them. "Perhaps I'll join you there next year."

"It's all right if you don't."

Aziraphale nods. "Well. Happy bandstand anniversary."

He isn't sure what else to say, so he buries his nose in the flowers. They are thick with leaf and stem, the sort of flowers that grow along fields and roadsides. They aren't showy or splendid, but they make a fine bouquet. 

He brings them to the back room to find a vase and fill it with water. Crowley follows, and he can almost feel the demon's gaze, prickling at his collar as he fusses with the flowers, arranging them just so. At last, he looks at them, satisfied, and steps back.

"They're lovely," he says and hazards a glance at Crowley.

Aziraphale fights the urge to lower his eyes, to look away. He's felt shame for so long that it's hard to be free of it even now.

"I'm so sorry," he says. He shakes his head at the memory of his own foolishness. "I felt sure She would listen and set things right."

They don't talk about Her, not ever. The subject of God is purposely absent, carefully avoided in all their many conversations since the world didn't end. 

"Don't apologize," Crowley says. "It's all right. That's what got us here, as much as the rest of it."

He closes the distance between them, takes Aziraphale by the shoulder, and draws him into a loose embrace. He isn't wearing sunglasses — he's discarded them somewhere between the front door and the back room — and when Aziraphale looks up, he sees nothing but tenderness and open affection in those serpentine eyes.

Crowley's hands move along his back, caressing and soothing, until he finds the place where wings arise — tucked safely away in that other plane. His fingers dig in, massaging behind each scapula, and Aziraphale relaxes against him, lets his head fall to Crowley's shoulder.

"Want to take this upstairs?" 

"Yes," Aziraphale says, because it's just as they've planned. 

They are taking three days to celebrate the anniversary of last year, to honor everything that changed and endured. To Aziraphale, the space of three days feels proper — like taking a pencil to his calendar and marking an open and closed parenthesis around the date of Armageddon itself — a breath in, a pause, a breath out. And yet, today is the hardest — his anniversary of turning away from Crowley.

But Crowley is smiling, as happy as Aziraphale has ever seen him. It is so easy to reach for his hand and lead the way, to cross the back room, and go up the narrow stairway to the bedroom. 

He stops near the foot of the bed, and turns. He steps closer at the same time that Crowley moves towards him. Without hesitation, they catch each other as if they were dancing, and move back to that gentle embrace. 

"I love you," Aziraphale says. 

And then, as they've done so many times since the world didn't end, they kiss. He remains in awe of how simple this is, with no fear left to stop them. When Crowley pulls away, it is only to shift his stance so they are forehead to forehead, nose to nose. He draws a deep breath, seems to savor the scent of it, and then shuts his eyes. 

"Love you, too."

Aziraphale can't recall exactly when those words changed from desperate confession to daily reminder, but he's glad for the change. 

"And you _are_ my best friend," Aziraphale says. "I ought to declare that, I think, since we're remembering the day I denied it."

Almost all of the worry has left him now. There's still a piece of it there, like always, but it's diminished and small — easy to push it aside and close a door behind it.

"Best friend, yes. Understood," Crowley says, as he undoes the bowtie at Aziraphale's collar. "And you know what that means?"

"Are you going to say 'I told you so'?"

"Nah." He offers up a playful grin. "Means I'm gonna fuck my best friend."

Aziraphale's starts to laugh, but his breath catches when he sees the way Crowley looks at him. They've been doing this for a year now and it is still such an unexpected blessing. He never dared to hope for the freedom to indulge these desires. 

With Crowley's hands still at his collar then working their way downwards, he feels the familiar pull of buttons, unpicked from buttonholes one by one. He returns the favor, loosening Crowley's tie, tugging it free, and then starting in on the buttons. With shirts undone, they reach for belts and trousers. They unfasten, unzip, step out of clothing, and toss it aside. A miracle would make the work go faster, but they don't need to hurry. Time stretches before them like a gift. 

"This year with you has been the best of all of them," Aziraphale says. 

He means it, desperately so, and yet there's still that little piece of worry, clawing softly at the door and whispering its warning. _It's too good. It can't last. They'll come and take it from us._ Relief and fear can coexist, it seems, and it's a strange mix of feeling. 

He leans in to kiss Crowley, to make every thought fall quiet except the ones that stoke his desire. That's not a hard goal to accomplish. Crowley's hands are all over him again, caressing down his back, across his belly, and then lifting his thigh to guide their bodies closer. They are pressed together now. And it's almost shocking how much intimacy they've both grown comfortable with. 

"You're not close enough yet." Aziraphale whispers against Crowley's lips. "I'll need you inside me."

Crowley draws a breath, exhales, and yet when he speaks, he still sounds breathless with want.

"All but done."

Those words are no accident. Crowley seems to enjoy giving voice to old phrases he once used in a much different context: to assent to a miracle as part of the Arrangement. _Yes, I'll do that one. It's yours. You can have it. You'll find it's all but done._

Aziraphale always notices. 

"And you'll do a good job of it, I trust," he says, echoing a reply of his own from centuries ago, because two can play at that game.

"For you, I'll do my best," Crowley says.

Aziraphale pulls him to the bed and guides him near. Every part of this is dear and familiar: Crowley's long, slender thighs, the grip of his hands, the rise of his cock. Aziraphale greets him gladly and welcomes him to all the soft and yielding places of his body. He is already slick with oil, prepared for breach and joining.

"Ah, but you're good to me,” Aziraphale says, a gift of words for the first strokes in. "You always have been."

Crowley shudders against him. To be praised this way hits something deep and primal, a need he's always carried that has gone unacknowledged for far too long. It has always been there, lurking beneath the surface of every protest that there is nothing nice or good about him. Aziraphale knows all this now, and he leans into it. 

"You're perfect for me. Always."

His breath comes heavy with relief and arousal. All day he has ached for this, for Crowley's return from that wretched bandstand. He has waited to once again bring Crowley close, to be inundated by the scent of him. It is always made potent somehow, by some pheromone there, when they indulge in these exertions.

Aziraphale looks up at him.

"Oh, my dear, you're such a pleasure."

They move in perfect tandem, surging and rising as if caught in the churn of a tide. 

"That's why we do it, angel." Crowley's voice is soft, but heat flows through his words.

The look on his face is bare and honest with no more use for guile or hiding. Aziraphale can read it plain, a mix of lust and love, desire and devotion. 

By the closing throes, they are gasping together. Aziraphale cries out in incoherent syllables, overwhelmed by the revelation that every time the pleasure is greater because the love itself grows deeper. 

He can finally see the truth of it: they've been doing this all along. Before it was sex, it was tea or whiskey or words alone, and the simple choice to stand together and watch the world from their own hidden corner. They've been binding themselves to each other, little by little, for thousands of years. And now the pull of that desperate, staggering orbit has grown so close and dear.

They are two winged creatures, grounded together in the earthly life they've chosen.

* * *

A few hours later, Aziraphale wakes with a certain clarity of awareness. There is someone downstairs in his shop, and that shouldn't be possible — the door is locked and secured with sigils against otherworldly intrusion. 

There can't be anyone down there, and yet, he senses something ominous. 

He tries to reassure himself. He knows that he worries too much. The shop is quiet. All he hears is the soft sound of Crowley breathing.

He sits up in bed, careful not to wake the demon beside him. He glances over and takes a moment to appreciate Crowley's lean form, completely uncovered in the warmth of the bedroom. He is beautiful, bathed in the golden light of a late summer afternoon.

Aziraphale would love to just sit here admiring the view. But the strange new awareness hasn't left him. He slips out of bed, miracles himself into a dressing gown, and heads downstairs for a cursory walk through the bookshop, just to be sure.

When he reaches the bottom step, he feels it for certain — a presence. Something is there and he can't tell what it is, other than powerful and clearly not human. When he rounds the corner past an aisle of shelves, he sees what appears to be an ordinary person, running graceful fingers along the spines of books, and peering up to read their titles. 

"Quite the collection you have here."

The not-a-human turns to look at him with eyes older than time. 

Knowledge hits him like a blow to the gut. It is Her. Really Her. She stands in his shop browsing the shelves as if it were perfectly normal, as if She hasn't been silent and neglectful and possibly even absent entirely for thousands of years.

"Hello," She says.

He feels off balance, shocked enough that he responds by rote, following the script built for a lingering customer.

"Can I help You find something in particular?"

It is disconcerting how much She looks like an average human — middle sixties, face creased with smile lines, and fit despite the encroaching softness of old age. She is casually dressed, but in a way that looks expensive.

"I have what I'm looking for." 

There's something telling in the way She looks at him. She's playing with double meanings, he's sure of it. What She's found is not really — or not only — the slender volume in Her hands.

"May I take this book with Me?" She asks.

He can't see what it is. All that registers before She slips it into Her tote bag is that the book is a modern hard cover and that someone has removed the dust jacket. He can't say for sure if it's actually part of his collection, or if it's something She's conjured out of ether for a reason he can't yet fathom. Either way seems plausible.

"You can take anything You like," he says.

It's not an invitation, simply a statement of fact. If She wants, She can take away everything: his books, his shop, his life here with Crowley. She can destroy it on a whim if only She decides. The story of Job comes to mind.

"Misprinted Bibles, now these are interesting." 

She pulls a worn edition from the shelf, pages through it with careful fingers, and smiles.

He feels a sudden panic, as if She were reading the Book of Aziraphale there on the page, with all its complicated predilections. 

"Oh, the Bibles... yes. They aren't all blasphemous misprints. The proper ones are just there." He points to a bookcase and tries his best to smile. "Third shelf from the top."

His nerves are starting to fray at the edges and come undone. He glances around the bookshop, seeking purchase, a safe place to anchor. And for a moment he finds it. All around him the shelves are awash in sunlight. Their shadows stretch long and familiar across the floor. It's a comfort that doesn't last. He looks at Her again as She reshelves the Bible, and he remembers how it feels to stand in the halls of Heaven. Too bright, too open and exposed, it's a place of light without the comforting safety of shadow. He's always found it terribly unnerving.

But not quite as unnerving as the way She smiles at him now. 

"Just this one, I think." She pats Her tote bag. 

It's made of plain, undyed canvas with a cluster of yellow hexagons printed in the center, an abstraction of a honeycomb.

If he weren't so shaken and out-of-sorts, he knows he'd be mentally cataloguing every treatise ever written about the industriousness and virtue of honeybees in their orderly hives. He'd be cross-referencing them to each other and trying to discern some deeper symbolic purpose. So much ink has been spilled in pious rapture over bees that it can't be coincidence.

She shifts the bag higher on Her shoulder — and it's still disconcerting how human She looks. 

"I'll be back tomorrow morning," She says. "And then I'd like us to have a conversation."

"A conversation... about the book?"

"Not about the book."

"No, of course not."

"Tomorrow," She says.

"Tomorrow, yes," says Aziraphale. "What time shall I..."

But She doesn't answer. She's across the shop somehow, and She's already leaving through the front door, breezing past locks and sigils alike. Aziraphale stands there, dazed and wondering how to gently tell one's demon that God was here visiting and She plans to return.

* * *

"Wake up." Aziraphale nudges Crowley, then sets a hand on his shoulder and shakes him. "It's important."

"Stop it." Crowley groans, still half lost to sleep. "What?"

Aziraphale explains, watches Crowley's eyes go wide as the understanding sinks in.

"I can't be here. Not with Her."

* * *

Aziraphale watches him go and doesn't try to stop him. He believes that Crowley fears Her, though he can't know for certain. They simply don't talk about God. But he trusts that Crowley will look out for himself. When the danger has passed, he'll return and all will be well again. Aziraphale has faith in it.

And yet, a nagging sense of doubt tells him that Crowley isn't the only one who ought to worry. He can feel the start of a panic, gnawing at his insides, ready to swell into something monstrous and make a feast of him. 

He cannot let it.

He needs to set certain thoughts in order. And yet, he fears that to do so will be like pulling a thread to find the whole cloth unraveling in his hands. But he can't put it off any longer. So he sits at his desk and shuffles aside a stack of old papers. Clearing a tidy space feels metaphorically right for the task ahead of him. 

Very gently, he touches the edge of his desk. Through the years there've been so many surfaces like these — desks, tables, the arms of chairs, the curve of a porcelain teacup. Whenever he's unsettled by worry, he runs his hands along their planes and edges. He finds comfort there, mooring himself to earthly objects. It's a way to ease his worry when he's mired in a sea of doubt.

And he has so many doubts: about the nature of good and evil, of angels and demons, the Ineffable Plan, and God Herself. He's been diligently avoiding these thoughts since Armageddon — as if pretending they don't exist can prevent them from adding up to a terrible sum of insight. 

But no, he knows it can't work that way. If he has betrayed Her, it's already been done — by his choices and actions. It is already written, indelibly there in the book of his life — The Book of Aziraphale. If it were real, if he could pull it from the shelf and read it, he would open it first to a thousand-year-old memory. 

When shuts his eyes, he can see it. 

_1020 A.D._

_He sits at a table across from his old friend Crowley. They aren't yet what they will be, but already they are something extraordinary. He is reporting back for the first time, now that he and Crowley have begun their Arrangement._

_"It's done, then?" Crowley asks._

_"Yes, same man, the blessing and the temptation."_

_That's how it all began. They've discovered their targets are in fact the same._

_"So it worked. He'll do it?" Crowley says._

_"He will. He wants to. I barely had to mention it."_

_"And for you? How was it?"_

_Aziraphale sighs. "Fine. It was fine."_

_He looks down at the table, at his goblet of mead, anywhere but Crowley's face. He wants so desperately to reach for the demon's hand, to hold it between both of his and explain that the temptation is fine because it doesn't feel much different than the blessing. They are both the same damned thing — though he won't choose those words. He feels so many things that he doesn't know how to talk about with Crowley._

_He wonders, what if blessings are simply another type of temptation? He's had an inkling of it before, when Crowley first described the work, trying to explain the way of it._

_"It's just a conversation, angel. Talk to them, suggest things. Or better yet, let them suggest. Less work for us. Sit back and agree with them. Add a bit of power to it if you have to."_

_And so that's what he's done._

_He has dropped in on a disgruntled lord under plausible pretense as a manored knight seeking hospitality on his long return from pilgrimage. While sharing stories of his escapades, he's made a few pointed remarks about the fact that not all lords he's met in his travels are worthy men — not like you, good sir._

_That gives him the opening to ask about neighboring lords in the area, and from there, well, it isn't temptation as much as it is encouraging the man to apply a certain logic._

_That neighboring lord sounds awful. What a terrible way to treat his vassals. He ought to be stripped of lands and titles. A noble, pious lord will have to move against him. If someone were to undermine his reputation to the king, well, it would almost be a public service, wouldn't it?_

_Aziraphale has long been practiced in the art of justification. And where that comes up short, there is always compartmentalization._

_"Sounds like you're a natural." Crowley grins at him from across the table as he recounts that first temptation._

_"Don't try to flatter me, please. I don't appreciate it."_

_There's an edge to his voice. Aziraphale is annoyed and also lying. He does appreciate the flattery when it comes from Crowley. He wants more of it, and yet he knows that's not the proper way to feel. The whole thing needles at him._

_"Well, was it fun?" Crowley leans forward, eager to hear the answer._

_"Fun? Tempting someone?"_

_"Wasss it?"_

_Aziraphale considers for a moment and opts for the truth. "You know, it felt honest."_

_"Honest?"_

_"With this particular fellow, yes."_

_"How do you mean?"_

_"He wanted to do the bad thing — the theft. Turning around and blessing him with grace enough that he'd give to the church, that was more of a push."_

_And, yes, he thinks, indulging in an act of temptation has been fun. But he doesn't divulge that detail._

_"Give me one, then," Crowley says._

_"What?"_

_He watches Crowley's hands. They are pressed to the table, his fingers splayed, and the veins of each hand are candlelit ridges of light and shadow. How simple and impossible it would be to touch him._

_Aziraphale catches himself stroking the back of his own hand. He reaches for his goblet and drinks, trying to wash down whatever he's been feeling. It feels like a spark, threatening to flame into something he'll have to notice._

_"A job of yours. Give me one. And I'll do it."_

_That shouldn't be exciting, but it is. It thrills him this first time and it will again the next, and every other time after that._

He sighs at the memory. 

Especially in those early days, there was something delicious about their secret alliance. It felt so very good to do secret things with Crowley. He understands it now. They both liked seeing their counterpart — their intended nemesis — carrying out assignments on behalf of the opposing office. Even back then, they'd been dancing around the attraction for a long time.

He wonders, has God been watching it unfold? Watching an angel tempt people into sin and a demon set them on a path to piety? And if She has, then what does She think of it? Will She disapprove on rigid principle — like all the rest of Heaven — or will She allow some space for nuance? 

He summons a cup of tea to his desk, and with the tap of his finger, he sets the temperature just where he likes it. He takes a sip, shuts his eyes again, and imagines another page in the book of his life.

_2009 A.D._

_He opens a second bottle of wine and refills Crowley's glass. It's been a few months since Warlock was placed with the Dowlings. And this evening, they aren't so deep into drinking that they can't keep their words straight. Aziraphale fills his own glass next, and then settles back into his armchair. The bookshop is quiet. It feels like a sanctuary._

_"What are you thinking?" Crowley asks._

_He's sprawled across the sofa, relaxed and smiling, and his features are so very handsome in the warmth and shadows of the lamplight._

_And, good Lord, Aziraphale is thinking about a lot of things — entertaining thoughts he's never felt bold enough to ask before now._

_"Tell me," he says, "are there jobs that you hide from me? Do you ever have to hurt them? I mean, really hurt them?"_

_Crowley's smile disappears._

_"I'm a demon, not a sadist."_

_"But surely, head office asks you to do things..."_

_"What they ask and what I do about it aren't always a match. Same as you, I think."_

_It isn't an answer._

_"Aziraphale." Crowley sits up straight and glares at him. "Whatever you're imagining, you can stop."_

_"I'm sorry," Aziraphale says. He is trying to justify it, to be okay about all the ways he feels, all the hidden desires he harbors._

_Crowley relents for some reason, despite how clearly these questions annoy him. He eyes his drink for a long while, then says, "I don't terrorize people, not when I can avoid it. Not unless they've really earned it."_

_"Ah."_

_"It's like this: Why torture someone when you can needle them a little and it works just the same? They'll escalate conflicts you didn't even know were there. Next time you look they're busy murdering each other. It's depressing stuff. Wouldn't want you to be part of it."_

_He looks so forlorn to think of it. Aziraphale's instinct to comfort kicks in and he doesn't even try to stifle it._

_"I rather think I am part of it. I can bless them and inspire faith all day, but in the end it's complicated. More often than not it's the faithful that turn around and start a genocide somewhere."_

_Crowley watches him rather thoughtfully for a moment._

_"If the rest of them were more like you, I wouldn't have left."_

_He says it as if he had chosen to Fall, which of course isn't true._

_But Aziraphale decides not to call him on it. Instead, he trails a finger along the worn fabric of the armchair and tries to ignore the pleasant warmth he feels at Crowley's words._

_He knows he shouldn't take them as a compliment. But he does anyway, and adds them to his collection — another cherished moment among so many others._

He takes another sip of tea and flips those imaginary pages forward by a decade.

_2019 A.D._

_Crowley's flat is dark, and that feels right for an evening when they ought to be hiding. They have a plan, but Aziraphale worries. What if it doesn't work?_

_"If it doesn't work, they'll destroy us. Or torture us for the rest of eternity and we'll never see each other again," Crowley says._

_"Quite right," Aziraphale agrees. "And I think that means we've run out of time for games. Cards on the table, please."_

_Crowley looks at him, uncertainty blazing in those yellow eyes._

_"I'll go first then." He swallows, adjusts his vest, runs his hands down the seam, skimming frayed cloth and buttons in a bid to banish his nerves. Courage gathered, as much as it can be, he fixes Crowley with a steady gaze and takes a step forward._

_"I love you," he says. "I think perhaps I always have, but it took me a while to learn the truth of it."_

_And that's all it takes. Whatever barrier of uncertainty remains, it crumbles to dust in the space between them. Crowley closes the distance and before Aziraphale has a moment to think they are holding each other. A kiss is easy after that. And then, a night of other things._

A cherished memory — but he isn't going to review the remainder of that chapter now. He shuts the imaginary book and turns his attention back to the problem that worries him.

He has reviewed all the major themes in rough outline, all the things She might punish him for: the thrill at tempting humans into bad things, the doubt that blessings even matter, and the bond he's found, across enemy lines, in taking a demon as his co-conspirator, friend, and now, his beloved. Even worse, he isn't remotely sorry.

But he lives in a bookshop, after all, and there are other thinkers here whose words might help. Perhaps some works of religion and philosophy will help him craft a proper defense, in case She gives him the chance to speak on his own behalf. 

He gets up from his chair and sets off to scour the shelves.

* * *

The Bentley skids to a perfect stop in front of his building and Crowley is out, launching himself forward as the door slams shut behind him. Desperation twitches at his mouth, a sneer trying to have its way with him. He is tired of fighting it, tired of fighting eyes blown yellow. A coward thing, he wants only to run, to be as far from Her as demonly possible.

He pushes his way past people on the pavement. Where they don't move, he shoves them along with a small burst of power. 

And then he is safe in his building. No need to wait for the lift, it is there already, and it carries him up to his sanctuary. He practically flies through the front door. Now that he's here, where chaos can be safely contained, he channels his rage and fear, and unleashes it all on the houseplants.

He raises them up, pulls them high in the air and then all at once, he cuts off the miracle and lets gravity have its way. They are falling, every last one of them. There will be no mercy and none will be spared. Right at the end, he adds a burst of rage and power. They smash hard against the floor. Every pot shatters, spilling soil and tearing leaves.

Crowley falls to his knees in the middle of all that is broken. He claws at the wreckage until his fingers close around shards of ceramic. They are razor sharp and he squeezes them hard. 

The pain is what stops him.

He winces at the sting of it, a line sliced red and deep from the base of his thumb across the width of his palm. He lifts his hand to look more closely at the blood rising up, beaded and bright.

He could mend it with a thought, but not yet. He watches it drip to the cuff of his shirt, painting the fabric a darker, wetter black. His thoughts narrow in on the pain. 

The thing about pain is he can't turn it off without consequence. He tried it once, thousands of years ago, because why feel pain if you don't have to? He gave it up after something sharp had sheared off his fingers — an accident — and he hadn't noticed what was wrong until he heard the onlookers screaming. 

It's a wretched business, regrowing bone and flesh. Without pain, the messenger, to point the way, he is cursed to lose pieces of himself. 

The humans, they used to cast out lepers. He remembers the colonies of them, huddled for warmth, ragged and destitute. It wasn't the disease itself that rotted flesh until it fell away. No, that was numbness, the deadened nerves and all the little wounds they couldn't feel. 

Pain is a wicked sort of blessing. 

When tossed out of Heaven, into the mire and bite of acid, the rotting stink of sulfur, he had writhed until everything was pain. Pain had been Her punishment. 

He wonders, sometimes, if suffering is a method She chooses or a thing that She's slave to. And it doesn't matter the answer, because yes to either one means She doesn't deserve to be worshipped.

He thinks perhaps those great holy masochists were the ones who understood it all along. He casts his thoughts back to the worst of them, the battered ones high up on their columns — the stylites. 

_Aziraphale is there with him, visiting the faithful. Crowley can't remember the name of it now, a city oasis on the cusp of the dunes, a great looming desert against which everything else feels small. And the angel stands there looking up at the man on the platform atop a pillar, horrified at the spectacle._

_"Crowley, what the Hell is going on?"_

_It's the first time he's ever heard Aziraphale swear._

_"Not my doing," Crowley says and that's the truth._

_The stylite above them is a thing of humanity's own terrible making. He's bound a coarse rope tight around his middle. Where it abrades the skin and the layers of flesh beneath, the wound weeps blood and ichorous fluid. When the flies come, the maggots will grow. For the faithful below, it's a blessing to catch bits of putrefaction sloughing off. These are living people aching to make corpses of themselves, to deny the flesh and work it over into pain. They want this. They choose this. They are brutal and righteous in it. Pain is their deity._

_Aziraphale is right; it's hellish enough._

Some moments he can recall so vividly, even after all the centuries gone by. 

_In his mind's eye, he sees himself turning to Aziraphale in time to watch the angel brush a breadcrumb from the soft cloth of his sleeve._

_"That plinth can't be comfortable for kneeling. He ought to come down and have a meal. And let those wounds heal."_

_"He won't," Crowley says. "He wants it to hurt and rot and fester."_

_"But why?"_

_"Ascetics, angel. You know how they are. Sinful body, purification through pain, and all that."_

_"That isn't how holiness works. She doesn't want him to suffer."_

_"Doesn't She? Are you sure?"_

_Aziraphale casts him a look that brims with annoyance, then relents with a sigh._

_"Well_ I _don't want him to suffer." He turns from Crowley and shouts up. "Young man, do come down from there. You could use a bath and a good meal."_

_"The Lord gives me rest and sustenance — all that I need. Set aside your worldly delights and sanctify the body with holy abnegation."_

_"Oh, for goodness' sake," Aziraphale mutters._

_"You see? I told you they don't listen." He gives the angel a pointed look. "Forget about that one. Have that meal with me instead."_

_"Oh, all right."_

_And so they go off together to share bread and drink wine._

And that has always been the best part. The world is full of horrors that are only real because of Her. She went ahead and created everything without asking anyone's consent in the matter first. That's the real evil, as far as he can tell. But even the worst of it has been bearable with a friend to greet and sit with. 

Crowley looks up from his bleeding hand to the smashed remnants of the garden around him. 

"This is stupid," he says aloud to nobody. And he makes a better decision. 

* * *

Aziraphale is sitting downstairs attempting to read a paperback novel when Crowley returns. It's a surprise to see him. 

"What happened to keeping away for a while?" he asks as Crowley flops onto the sofa beside him.

"Can't leave you alone with Her. Not if it's bad."

Aziraphale sets the book aside.

"Yes, I've been worrying about it, a little."

"I can see that." 

Crowley gestures to the pile of books that Aziraphale has retrieved from the shelves and stacked on the side table. Each is a religious or philosophical consideration of the nature of God, God's love, or the concept of divine retribution.

"It turns out I didn't want to read any of those," Aziraphale says. "I opted for lighter material."

He eyes his discarded novel, which sits squarely in the beach-reads category and now looks sorely out of place among the likes of Aquinas and de Sales. 

"You don't suppose stacking them neatly might count for something?" he asks.

"If tidiness is the virtue She's looking for..." Crowley glances around the cluttered shop. "I think you're fucked."

Aziraphale sighs. "What do you think She wants?"

Crowley smiles, bright and genuine. He looks amused by the question.

"You're asking _me_ , a demon? Now that's legitimately funny."

Aziraphale fixes him with a look, searching and evaluative. 

"No, I don't think it is."

He says it more to himself than to Crowley, who can't seem to hear him and cranes his head nearer.

"What was that?"

"You figured out all of it, long before I did. The system — Heaven, Hell — the way it is and has been broken. Really, who better to consider the question than you, my dear?"

Crowley opens his mouth, and then, without a word, he shuts it again. He shakes his head minutely, just enough to indicate that _no, I can't do this one_.

"I wonder..." 

Aziraphale frowns, puzzling it over for a moment longer. And then, he lets it go. He feels the tension leave him as if it were yet another book he's chosen, reconsidered, and then set aside.

"You know," he says, "I can think of better ways to spend the night." 

He glances again at the stack of books. With a wave towards them, he pulls down a miracle that sends them away and replaces them with a bottle of wine and two glasses. 

He has just finished pouring their drinks, when Crowley slips two fingers into a shirt pocket and removes something small and rounded.

"Gift," he says and sets it on the table. "Well, not so much. It was yours."

Aziraphale picks it up and rolls it in the palm of his hand. "This is ancient."

"I stole it from you three thousand years ago. One of those decorative baubles, at the cuff."

"I don't remember this. But I do recall losing bits and buttons more often than I would have preferred. Were you taking them when I wasn't looking?"

"Just a few."

"Why on earth?"

"I liked them. Reminded me of you." 

"And you kept it all this time?"

"Forgot I still had one."

Aziraphale holds it to the light, examines the pendant-like form, carved by a long-dead artisan. The earliest buttons were adornments like this one, made of shell or bone, wood or horn — the remnants of other lives repurposed to serve the living. 

Something twists inside him, an ache to think of how many people have lived and loved and died in the great span of years since the button in hand was new. How many civilizations entire have grown up, flourished, and been laid low by war or calamity? And in all that time, amidst all those lives churning from breath to dust, the one constant, the one certainty, well, it hasn't been God at all. 

It's been Crowley —

_Crowley in dark robes leaning against the sandstone walls of a desert city, greeting Aziraphale with a word that means friend; Crowley waving to him across a crowded square, past booths of merchants with their dyed cloth and baskets of grain; Crowley appearing beside him with wine to share, sitting shoulder to shoulder near the warmth of an open fire; Crowley standing at a bus stop, grim under a gray sky, checking his mobile phone then failing to suppress a smile upon spotting Aziraphale from across the way._

"You've always looked for me," Aziraphale says. "Sought me out. I used to think you were doing it to divert my attention."

"I was," Crowley says. He adjusts his position on the sofa, shifts closer to Aziraphale and takes his hand. "I still am. Diverting."

"Yes, but I used to think you were doing it for nefarious purposes."

"I'm a demon. All my purposes are nefarious." Crowley closes Aziraphale's hand around the ancient trinket. "Reprehensible, even. Iniquitous."

His fingers move in a gentle caress along the back of his hand. Aziraphale hums with the pleasure of it.

"Diverting my attention because you're fond of me is the least evil reason possible."

"I'm not fond of you," Crowley says. 

He raises Aziraphale's hand to his lips and kisses the crease of his wrist, near the pulse point. 

"Fond doesn't even begin to describe it."

"How terrible," says Aziraphale, who doesn't mean it at all. "I'm being seduced by a demon. Whatever shall I do?"

"You'll come to bed with him, I hope."

"Mmm." 

Aziraphale reaches with his free hand — the one that isn't presently being kissed — catches Crowley by the waist, and draws him closer. 

"Yes," he says. "And once we're in bed I should like to have my way with him."

"He'd like that, too."

* * *

Aziraphale sits back against the pillows, propped up by the headboard. Crowley snuggles against him, ear to his chest. For a moment he simply rests there, rocked by the gentle rise and fall of the breath moving through him. Then he reaches up, finds Aziraphale's cheek, and curls his fingers along his jaw. Aziraphale presses into the touch and smiles.

"I'm glad you came back." He kisses Crowley's forehead.

"We'll get through it, angel. Like we always do." He sounds optimistic, almost cheerful.

"And if we don't?" Not getting through it is a real possibility this time. He can't pretend otherwise.

Crowley raises himself up on one elbow, lifts his head to look Aziraphale in the eye. 

"If we don't, well... thanks for the best six thousand years a demon could hope for."

Aziraphale smiles, and he tries to imbue it with all the sweetness he can manage, because his heart feels heavy.

"I wasn't with you for all of them."

"Yeah," Crowley says, "you were." He touches his chest, the place above his heart.

"Oh, my love," Aziraphale says. "Protest all you like, but you're as sentimental as I am."

Aziraphale smiles again, his expression lit up with mischievous intention.

"Now, come here," he says. "I have a demon in bed with me and I plan to make use of him."

Crowley can do little more than make a noise like _hngk_ — some combination of surprise and arousal — as Aziraphale rolls him back and presses him firmly to the bed. They usually work up to this, building slowly towards ecstasy with mouths and hands to get them started. But tonight there's an urgency to it.

"If you're amenable, my dear, I'd like to have you again and again, until morning. Just like this."

Crowley nods, vigorously, and whispers a "yes, please," as Aziraphale's fingers, now gleaming with oil, descend to the place where they're most needed. He traces gentle circles there while his gaze flickers, wanting too much at once. He takes in the sinuous line of Crowley's body, lingers on the welcome sight of his cock, growing fully aroused, then roves up to make eye contact, watching as Crowley's eyes lose focus, pupils blown wide in a sea of yellow, no whites to be seen.

"I'm going to open you." Aziraphale knows how those words will affect them both. 

Crowley gasps, an intake of breath, and nods once more. 

The thrill of this hasn't lessened, even after a year. He still can't quite fathom his own good fortune — to live in a world where he can say things like that, out loud, giving voice to desires that no longer need to stay hidden.

Aziraphale pushes into him, first with fingers, then lifting him up to press in with his cock. Of all the pleasurable things an earthly being can experience, sex is perhaps the strangest. He never expected to desire it so much. And yet with Crowley, he can't seem to do otherwise. They fit together so wonderfully.

Before long he is overwhelmed by it and the only relief to be found is in pinning Crowley down, fucking into him hard and fast, until they are both crying out with the exquisite ache of it. They build towards climax, slick with sweat, breathing heavy, hearts pounding — so very human in form and function.

Aziraphale grips Crowley's thighs, spreads him further.

"My love," he says, suddenly aware he has words that need to be spoken. "I won't let Her hurt you. She'll have to destroy me first."

Crowley looks utterly wrecked to hear it.

"Angel, yes." 

He's a powerful being, Aziraphale never forgets it. That makes it all the more arousing to see him like this — so thoroughly undone, giving over to pleasure and intimacy in equal measure. Crowley takes everything he's given. With legs spread, his body open, he is yielding and offering himself. Aziraphale has defied archangels for the sake of this demon, and now he is absolutely certain he will defy even God Herself. 

"Angel, yes," Aziraphale repeats Crowley's pleading words back to him, but with different meaning. "But not Her angel. Only yours."

Slick with sweat and oil, Crowley strokes his own length in the space between them. His hand falters, shaking as Aziraphale takes hold of his hips and fucks him impossibly faster.

"Mine?" His voice is a whispered thing, quiet and questioning, as if not quite believing his luck.

"Yours." Aziraphale affirms it. "My love, this is right. This is sacred."

"Yes. Please let it..." His words trail off as Crowley whimpers and comes apart.

* * *

Aziraphale rubs his eyes before he opens them. He must have dozed off again. Sleep is still a new habit, but he's been developing quite a knack for it. It's not the most elegant pastime, however. He touches his mouth, applies a tactile miracle to one corner, banishing the residue of dried saliva.

When at last he opens his eyes, he sees Her sitting at the foot of the bed. She's been watching them sleep. It's definitely weird. 

Aziraphale sits upright and as he moves, Crowley snuggles closer. 

"Mmph... angel..." Crowley mutters, then smiles, so relaxed and unguarded it makes Aziraphale's heart ache with love to see him. The touching moment is swiftly interrupted.

"Wake up, you two," She says.

Crowley startles awake.

Aziraphale looks at Her, then back to Crowley. He reads fear in Crowley's eyes and, instinctively, he shifts forward in bed, placing his body as a shield between Her and Crowley. 

He had thought She'd give him more time. 

He hasn't braced himself for Her showing up unannounced while he and Crowley are caught in a setting of such obvious intimacy. There's no chance of hiding or pretending otherwise. Within the past year they've been taking certain gifts She's given to the humans and absolutely running wild with them between each other. 

Of course, She already knows about them. She must. The fact that they can even yearn and lust and love and pleasure means She must have created them both to be capable of it. They can't have veered completely off script. 

But that's the question, isn't it? — the big, important, terrifying question. Everything they are and all that they've done — in undermining Armageddon, in loving each other despite their alleged nature — is it part of Her plan, or working against it?

"Oh, for My sake. Get. Up."

It isn't a request, more like the briefest of warnings.


	2. Chapter 2

Crowley blinks against a sudden burst of daylight. Being startled awake by the voice of the Lord Almighty is no demon's idea of a good time. And now it's even worse. He is standing barefoot in a crowded public location and he's still wearing his silken pajamas. Aziraphale stands beside him, curls askew and similarly dressed, but in tartan.

Humans are walking around them, giving a wide berth, and gawking discreetly.

"Well, now, that wasn't–" Aziraphale says, in that spectacularly irritated tone of his. He seems to remember to Whom he is speaking, and falls silent.

Crowley looks at him. One quick miracle each and their attire resolves itself into something more suitable. Aziraphale adjusts his collar, tugs at his bowtie until it shifts into place.

Crowley reaches into his pocket for a pair of sunglasses. Before sliding them on, he looks up and takes in the view. The high arches reinforced with steel make the space appear very much like an aging cathedral. But this is no consecrated ground. His feet aren't on fire, for one thing. And also there is a perfectly assembled whale skeleton suspended high above them.

God has brought them to the Natural History Museum.

"Excellent," She says. "Absolutely all of My best work is here." 

She gestures to the great expanse of the gallery around them, sweeping one hand through the air in a way that seems to encompass the entirety of the museum — display, building, and visitors alike. But then Her focus narrows to the pair of sleep-rumpled immortals in front of Her.

"Come on then. Keep up." 

Without waiting for a response, She turns and crosses the gallery.

Crowley watches Her, but makes no move to follow. He doesn't know why She's here, but he's done with whatever game She might be playing. He balked at Her convoluted, nonsensical rules a long time ago, and it's not a choice he regrets. Falling was the worst thing to ever happen to him, and yet if given the chance he would do it all the same — the questions, the refusal, the Fall. 

He's so focused on that thought — refusing Her — that it takes him a moment to notice. Aziraphale hasn't moved from his side. The angel is looking at him with obvious worry. 

"I suppose we ought to..." Aziraphale nods to the diminishing figure of God across the wide gallery.

"I won't follow Her." 

Crowley is firm and unyielding on that, and his voice is sharp, he can hear it. But as so often happens when he sees the entreating look on Aziraphale's face, he concedes, offers to meet him halfway. 

"Just so we're clear. I'm following you." He gestures for Aziraphale to lead the way. 

They catch up with Her at the giraffes, on display in an alcove along the western wall. The one on their left is a skeleton. Its bones are bleached and sterile, pinned together, and braced by a metal frame. Its partner is a different sort of lifeless remnant, a dead thing taken apart and recreated by taxidermy to resemble a living giraffe. They stand two by two, a suitably morbid reflection on the Ark of Noah.

Crowley doesn't like this place at all. The miasma of colonialist zeal has largely dissipated, but he has bad memories of spaces like these, designed to gather then separate, to dissect and display. 

"Giraffes, you know." The Almighty tilts her head back to gaze at each specimen. "I went through a phase: elegance and absurdity in equal measure."

She seems inordinately pleased with Herself.

Crowley tries to ignore how it grates on his nerves. Beyond his initial assessment, he doesn't care to waste his attention on giraffes. He isn't here to view the dead things on display. Instead, he paces behind Aziraphale in a slow arc, a partial orbit. It's easy to renew that old habit from the days when they had to be careful. 

"I think more animals," God says. "Don't you?" 

She turns to Aziraphale, awaiting his reply. 

The angel is unusually quiet. He nods his assent, but that's the end of it, no shared observations and nothing of conversation. He watches Her as She sets off towards the land mammals. His discomfort is obvious, his mouth set grim. 

That changes when he glances at Crowley. The contrast is striking. Aziraphale beams at him, loving and soft. His smile falls back into a mask of stoic indifference when his gaze shifts to the Almighty. 

It's a small act of defiance that cheers and worries him in equal measure.

He hasn't told him about Falling, so Aziraphale doesn't know. He doesn't understand that the pain of burning is only the worst part until it isn't. Pain, at least, is something to brace for and hold on against. When it's gone, the desolation hits, lonely and terrifying, and the connection to Heaven sliced away forever. 

Anything can grow in that absence. Resentment, malice, cruelty — those are the common ones. Their roots dig deep and spread poison as they flourish. Crowley isn't free of them — who could be? — but they feel lesser somehow. Even before the Garden, he could sense something else there inside him, pushing back against malice to keep it at bay. Perhaps it's nothing more than a foolish stubbornness, a bit of fight that never left him.

_Does She expect me to — what? — give up and hate everything? I certainly won't._

He doesn't like to think about it, and never wants to explain it, not even to Aziraphale. But perhaps he should have. If today is to end in retribution, shouldn't they both understand what they're up against?

Crowley's heart beats faster with nerves or hope — a mix of both. He wants so badly to get through this new ordeal, to make it home again safely with Aziraphale, unharmed and unchanged. He can almost taste how good it will be: the shiver of Aziraphale's breath against his skin as he whispers reassurances enough for both of them. 

_We're okay, we did it. I love you. We're here._

But they aren't there. Not yet. They still have to make it through this hijacked day, this aborted anniversary. 

Again, Crowley gestures for Aziraphale to lead the way. He turns to follow.

Ahead of them, the Almighty sets a quick pace through the crowds. She doesn't stop to make way for others. Instead, the humans — children on school outings, small clusters of families, groups of friends — all part before Her, yielding space without seeming to realize they're doing so. 

If She has a specific plan for traversing the museum, Crowley can't tell. It's convoluted and indecipherable. Thankfully, She doesn't say much as they drift from one display to another. She glances at Aziraphale from time to time, directs his attention to a particular creature or placard of text. Aziraphale acquiesces, nods when She speaks to him, and looks Her in the eye in a way that's polite and impassive. 

Every few minutes, he steals a glance at Crowley. He tries to smile, but Crowley can see that he's worried. He's adjusting his jacket, running his fingers along threadbare fabric.

They ought to be waking up about now, having tea and coffee, and then packing a bag to set out for a picnic. They ought to be driving towards Tadfield, stopping wherever they most believe they'll find what they're looking for: some perfectly wild little field where they can relax together and celebrate that the world didn't end in fire and flame.

Instead, Crowley stares down at the bones of a snake. _Lot of ribs, snakes._ He is curious despite himself. He feels the old urge to ask — _what were You thinking, why all this?_ — stirring to life within him. His eyes dart from the case of reptiles to the God who left him in darkness. Her back is turned, and Her focus is solely on Aziraphale. And yet, he doesn't feel ignored or invisible. It might be better if he did. Instead, he has the sense that She's waiting for something.

They continue to a room full of insects. Crowley hangs back. He modifies his orbit into something further off and more skittish. He sharpens his hearing with a miracle.

"Wings," She says, while gazing up at a case full of long-dead butterflies. "Such a grand idea. You know?"

Aziraphale stands beside Her.

"Yes," he says, polite and perfunctory. "Wings are lovely."

"Mmm. So many varieties. And so many colors. Do you have a favorite?"

Crowley's nerves give a twinge of warning. There's something in Her tone that sounds as though She's testing him. 

"A favorite variety of wing?" Aziraphale repeats the question. He speaks slowly, enunciating each syllable as if the words are unfamiliar. Crowley recognizes that particular verbal tactic. Aziraphale is buying time.

He glances over his shoulder to catch sight of Crowley. If he's looking for help, he's out of luck. Crowley mouths the words, _Not on fire_ , which is, in fact, his honest answer. But not something he'll dare say out loud.

Aziraphale swallows and turns back to the butterflies.

"I suppose I like the differences between them," he says, "the variety itself. How bland the world would be if every winged creature had a matching set."

"It's not a trick question," She says. "Just pick a butterfly."

Aziraphale points to one, medium-sized and brown-speckled, the sort that could camouflage itself nicely if it needed to hide from a predator.

"Good. Let's keep going."

Crowley can't guess what She's up to. 

She sets off again, leading them quickly past the big room full of dinosaurs. Their skeletons are various and massive. She doesn't stop for these at all, but grins at them boldly while skirting past. And then She leads them up some stairs to a room full of gemstones. 

Crowley has been careful to keep his distance. He's not sure how, but She manages to sneak up beside him near a case of polished gems.

"I like these," She says, pointing down to a set of opals that shimmer like the cloud of a nebula. "Don't you?"

It's the first time She's spoken only to him and something in Her voice sounds dangerous, like She's giving out riddles again and he'll need to get it right the first try.

He opens his mouth, but can't form a single word. He doesn't want to be here, standing next to God, examining dead things and scraps of earth as though their worth can be counted up and measured. 

Aziraphale intervenes.

"Please." He stands beside Crowley, touches his shoulder. "Please leave him be. He shouldn't have to– to answer. Not after... everything." His lip trembles as he oversteps that boundary and makes a demand of the Almighty.

God, interrupted, swings Her gaze. This frees Crowley, but now She glares hard at Aziraphale. 

"Do you mean to say _not after everything I've done_?"

"N–no," he says, but then his grip on Crowley's shoulder tightens. He steadies himself.

"I suppose, yes," he amends. "That is what I mean. He shouldn't have to talk to You. Not after all that You've done to him."

Her smile is sudden and incandescent. Her eyes light up with it. Her teeth are bright.

Crowley looks at Aziraphale, sees the certainty there in his stance and the defiant lift of his chin. It's really happening. She has asked him to choose and he's done it. As easy as that.

"Oh, I love you," Crowley says, little more than a whisper. 

"Incredible," She says.

That too-bright smiled fades. She tilts Her head, as though listening to something in the silent distance. Crowley hears nothing.

"It's time. We need to go sit in the garden."

* * *

Aziraphale feels his stomach lurch. The sensation calls to mind motion sickness, which isn't something he'd experienced until the advent of motor vehicles. He doesn't care for it. 

He glances around, taking in his new surroundings. He's sitting on a bench in a garden. The Almighty has moved them again without any warning. And while he'd really like to tell Her _not to do that, please,_ he's given Her ample cause to smite him already. Best not push his luck.

She's sitting right beside him in the center of the bench. Aziraphale leans forward, peers around Her to where Crowley is seated on Her left. His hair is a riotous mess, tufts sticking up left and right, and his sunglasses have slipped down the bridge of his nose. He looks about as off-kilter as Aziraphale feels.

The outer wall of the museum is visible beyond the greenery, so they haven't gone far. On a path nearby, a pair of children run past, followed by an adult who calls for them to "slow down, please, this isn't a race." A young couple stops less than a meter away to observe a flower with a visiting bumblebee. They don't seem to notice the bench where God sits.

Aziraphale suspects She's built a hidden pocket of reality to keep them away from prying eyes. 

"Take My hand, please," She says.

Aziraphale barely has time to react. He turns just in time to see Her reaching out for both their hands, not allowing either of them a choice in the matter. 

_Crowley won't like it_ , he thinks. And if there were time enough, he'd intervene to stop Her. But he isn't fast enough to speak. Her hand makes contact and, _oh!_ it feels lovely — slightly cool to the touch, the perfect balance of softness and strength. 

At the moment of contact, everything around them changes.

The garden drops away and instead they sit on the bench in the middle of a desert plain. They are surrounded by rocky terrain, a hard country where there ought to be scraggly bushes and tenacious grasses. But all the greenery is dead, scorched to ash. The sky is stained black and gray with storm clouds. 

Aziraphale looks down. Beneath his feet he sees blood in the packed sand. Nearby are corpses with the remnants of wings sticking up at jarring angles. Their black and white feathers catch the wind and flutter like torn banners — not dead humans then, but the lifeless corporations of angels and demons, all heaped together. 

There is fighting in the distance — a sign the great battle hasn't yet been lost or won. A trumpet rings out, then ceases.

Archangel Gabriel staggers into view, roused by that last clarion. His wings have been crushed and his clothes are streaked with fresh blood. He stumbles forward, then drops into a gully of brackish liquid, a dark mix of oil and water. His eyes remain open, but he isn't there anymore.

The water into which he's fallen is sanctified, it seems. In delayed pursuit, a demon — similarly torn and bloodied, barely recognizable as Dagon — trips forward and lands with a splash that turns into a high, clear scream of agony. Dagon melts into smoke, leaving a film of sickly iridescence in the water.

The battle in the distance wanes. Skirmishes lit by holy flame and hellfire are extinguished one by one. In the dusk and ash, only two figures remain. Aziraphale can barely see them. 

The Almighty squeezes his hand — a warning, perhaps — and suddenly, the horizon flies towards them. The bench hasn't moved, but they are closer now to those two figures. Aziraphale can see them clearly. 

Archangel Michael fights the Beast alone. 

Nothing of the prim bureaucrat to be seen, Michael is lithe and brutal. With a sword borne in one hand, the other reaches skyward, pulling fearsome power down from Heaven and wielding it in a shield of light. Michael holds off the Beast, a red-eyed horror that once had been Adam. 

But the fight takes its toll. Michael's strength seems to flicker, that Heavenly light nearly spent. With every hit against the shield, the Beast swells in power. Its arms bulge with new-formed muscle and sinew, its fingernails elongate into claws that slash forward, eager to land a killing blow. 

But no. By some last chance, Michael dodges then thrusts — impaling the creature that still almost looks like a boy — sword clean through. The Beast slouches against the blade and twitches as its essence bleeds away. And then it starts: something else grows from the wound, not blood or darkness, but a curling tendril of emptiness, pale and reaching.

At that moment, God releases their hands. The desert falls away and they are back in the garden as if they've never left at all. 

"So," She says. "We avoided all that."

Aziraphale's eyes are wide. She's shown him horrors with a vividness he hasn't dared to imagine. 

"That was... if we hadn't stopped it–"

"Armageddon, yes." She says. "One version of it, anyway. The variables are infinite. It can be a real headache keeping track of them all."

"Wait, bring it back." Crowley speaks to Her as if suddenly it's no big deal, as if he hasn't been petulant and frightened and avoiding Her all morning. Curiosity seems to have got the better of him. "Rewind it. Please?"

She smiles at him and holds out Her hand, palm up, waiting. Crowley looks at it, but doesn't move. Her other hand is held out for Aziraphale, but he's already decided. He'll follow Crowley's lead. He won't take Her hand unless Crowley does first.

"How could I forget?" She says. "The absolute stubbornness of angels." 

She grabs both their hands and the scene begins again with blood and trumpets. It unfolds as it did before, a repeat performance with Gabriel and Dagon, the Beast and Michael.

"There," Crowley says, snapping his fingers with his free hand as he points to the scene in front of them.

When nothing changes, he frowns at God, and then miracles a television remote into his hand. He points it at the Beast — thrashing as it dies on Michael's blade — and presses a button. The scene freezes. Either the miracle worked or God is humoring him. But there's no time for Aziraphale to reflect on the implications, because the scene before them is alarming enough to demand all attention.

"Oh, yes, what is that?" Aziraphale says.

He looks at the sliver of emptiness, pale and ominous, which bleeds from the Antichrist's wound. It seems to rip through the fabric of reality like a knife through canvas. 

"That," God says, "is what happens if a battle between occult beings is allowed to continue unchecked. Now watch."

The scene unfreezes and the pale wound grows. It swirls around them, gray like a fog. And yet somehow there is no motion, only airless stillness, empty and terrifying. Its scope feels vast and powerful, and at the same time it seems to exist without dimension. In contrast, even the stark light of Heaven is a memory of warmth. And his brief jaunt through Hell seems rather cozy.

"This is Void," She says. "The absence to My Presence. The real Adversary."

* * *

The tendrils of Void unfurl and reach for him. Crowley can sense it seeping in at the edges of being. It doesn't hurt. He can't think of a way to describe it. It bears no relation to the dichotomy of pain and pleasure, and seems to exist entirely outside the realm of thoughts and feelings. 

It's fucking terrifying, is what it is.

"We can't stay here," She says. 

The surroundings shift once more and now the bench is floating, suspended in a golden light that emanates from everywhere and nowhere. The air is fresh, good to breathe, and there are shadows, as though distant figures are moving through the light.

Crowley shuts his eyes against the brightness — his sunglasses have disappeared and not by his own doing — but the warmth is welcome. His right hand is still held firm in the Almighty's grasp. Not his preference, but he can't do anything about it, so he lets his hand go limp, tries to ignore the warmth and pressure of being held.

She's not exactly making it easy for him. She gives his hand a little squeeze and grins.

"This is Creation," She says. 

"Oh, but it's lovely!" For the first time all day, Aziraphale smiles at Her in a way that isn't false. 

Crowley recognizes it — that beaming, angelic smile that always makes his heart flutter. He ought to resent him for it, or see it as a small act of betrayal. But it seems he's become even more terrible at being properly demonic lately. All he can think is _please, please don't take this from him. Not like You took it from me._

"You know," She says, "it's also an unstable system always on the verge of collapse."

"What?" Crowley says, his curiosity getting the better of him for a second time.

"Yes, I've been trying to balance it forever," She says. "Difficult work. The best I can do is buy more time and push back against the inevitable triumph of Void."

"Inevitable?" Aziraphale's question is for the Almighty, but he looks past Her, catches Crowley's eye. 

And despite that She's sitting between them — as if physically enforcing a divide between good and evil — it feels for all the world like they're in this together. 

They're questioning Her together.

"Well," She says. "Not inevitable anymore. But we really have to play our cards right if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, really don't," Crowley says. 

He feels off balance, too genuinely baffled for the bitterness to break through, but it's there, like always, sunk well beneath the surface.

She releases both their hands and the scene of light disappears. The bench returns to the museum garden. 

"Here's what I can tell you," She says. "Nothing is predestined, not really. But it is all governed by chances — probability if you prefer the fancy word."

She materializes a tote bag in front of Her. Crowley tilts his head, and watches, fascinated, as She reaches in and digs around for a moment.

"I exist beyond all of it. I can see every possibility and how it plays out. Creation was always destined to end in Void."

Aziraphale frowns. "That's not very comforting, is it?" 

He's watching Her, too. Crowley catches him trying to peek into the bag.

"If you don't mind my asking," Aziraphale says, "why bother at all?"

The question doesn't seem to upset Her. 

"With Creation? It's what I Am. I can't not. Ah, there it is," She says, extricating Her hand and pulling what appears to be a hand-rolled cigarette from the depths.

"And besides, there was always hope — always one probability I couldn't see."

With the flick of a finger, She lights the cigarette and holds it out to Aziraphale, who looks at it.

"But... can't You see everything? Don't You know everything?"

He's on dangerous ground. Crowley knows where this sort of questioning leads — it's no place good. But Her expression isn't angry, not even slightly perturbed. If anything, She looks amused.

"Take it," She says and moves the cigarette closer to Aziraphale.

A ribbon of smoke curls away from them. Crowley watches it roll and tumble, moving as the air moves. His thoughts move just the same, swirling up questions: So this is fine now? An angel can just ask Her things? No swift and terrible repercussions?

"Is that a marijuana cigarette?" Aziraphale asks.

"No," She says. 

Shaken from his thoughts, Crowley laughs to imagine an angel and a demon smoking up with God. It sounds like the start of a terrible joke.

When Aziraphale still doesn't reach for the cigarette, She offers it instead to Crowley. He's curious enough that he pinches it from between Her fingers and raises it to his nose.

"Smells an awful lot like apples," he says. 

"Like Knowledge." She waits a moment as he studies it. "Go on then. Or do I have to do the reverse psychology thing again?" 

Crowley looks at Her, all of his attention honing in on that serene expression. "You've got to be kidding me."

"No, don't smoke," She says dryly. "It's bad for you."

"I knew it," he says. "I always knew it." He flashes Aziraphale a look of _I told you so_ as he brings the cigarette to his lips and breathes it in.

"Whoa." Crowley reels with the lightheaded feeling of new thoughts swirling in.

He can see it plain as day. The first war begins with angry words. Lucifer, gilded and beautiful, stands before the rest of the archangels wearing a haughty smirk. He goads them with his every word. Gabriel is one hundred percent done with it. Anger twitches across his face and his reply is thick with venom. Michael seethes with it, too, and looks about ready to cut someone. Sandalphon nods to Uriel as he reaches for the blade at his belt. So much for holiness, then. Both sides are grasping for evil really fucking fast.

And, because this is Her Knowledge, Crowley can feel it. That horrible, pale emptiness draws near. It skulks at the metaphysical edges, just waiting for immortal beings to unleash their power against each other and tear a rift in the fabric of everything. 

The probabilities aren't locked in yet, so She waits. Even with swords drawn and the fighting started, there's a longshot chance for peace. She waits until the moment arrives when nothing is left but annihilation and Void. 

And then She intervenes. Her choice isn't borne of judgment or animosity; She feels enough of that for both sides. Instead, She chooses by numbers. Lucifer's side has fewer angels, fewer beings to suffer when they Fall. It might just as easily be Gabriel and Michael who are purged from Heaven. Their only shield is that they stand on the fortunate side of an equation that looks an awful lot like the thing with the trolley that human philosophers have been dithering over for decades.

"Fuck," Crowley says. 

His hand rests on his thigh, palm facing upward with the cigarette held between thumb and forefinger. His mind turns over and over, moving slowly, attempting to process this new information, but failing spectacularly to slot it into his existing worldview.

"Fuck." He looks at Aziraphale and holds out the cigarette.

Without hesitation, the angel reaches for it. As he smokes, his eyes go wide with the influx of Knowledge. When it's done with him, he stamps out the cigarette on the arm of the bench and tosses it away. 

"He still gets to be angry with You."

Aziraphale's voice sounds muted and distant. A small and vulnerable part of Crowley's brain is telling him to _Focus! Listen. He's standing up for you! You're on the same side here._ But he can't regain control as the rest of his primary processing is diverted into a loop of fixation and blame. His thoughts go round and round, sharpening themselves with every pass — like a blade on the whetstone.

He's had enough of deference, enough of backing down from the treacherous Thing that sits beside him. 

"Thisss Void. Tell me..." He can feel the points of his teeth as they sharpen. He can feel the scales breaking through along the sinuous line of his neck. "It would desstroy You?"

"Hmm?" If She sees the menace, She doesn't let on. Her answer is casual, almost dismissive. "Yes. It does sometimes."

She sighs, as though wearied by the thought. "And then I reemerge with a Big Bang and bring the system back online. No harm to Me."

"But all My creations... _Poof_ ," She says. With fingers curled, then flexing out, She makes an explosion gesture. "Gone forever."

She looks to the museum with a gaze that seems wistful. 

Crowley blinks once, very slowly. When he opens his eyes, his teeth are blunted and the scales have disappeared. He's not really sure what just happened — all She did was answer the question, and it somehow disarmed him. The impulse to test Her is gone. 

He can see it now, as he couldn't before. If She's in thrall to anything, it's the urge to protect. That's a weakness he knows firsthand. And he wonders how many universes She'd lost before this one was new.

"But it's different now," She says. "It doesn't have to end. Because a thousand years ago, the two of you made a choice that changed everything."

"You don't mean..." Aziraphale looks to God, then Crowley. "You can't mean..." 

"The Arrangement," Crowley says, completing his sentence. 

"It fulfilled the one I hope had. The thing I couldn't see beyond was the probability that something within the system would push back with enough power to generate a whole new branch of possibilities that hadn't existed before. A spontaneous act of Creation. That's what you did."

She grins.

"An angel and a demon chose to trust each other and it reshaped the structure of reality."

* * *

It takes him a moment to absorb and process what he's seen and everything She's said. But once he has, two things are immediately clear to Aziraphale. The first is that he and Crowley are in a great deal of danger. The second is that there's no clever trick to get them out of it. Their fate is entirely in Her hands. 

There's no reason to be coy about it. He may as well ask.

"Are You going to destroy us?" 

He understands now. If She has to, She simply will, and not in judgment or retribution. It won't be because they've earned it — even if they have — and She won't do it because She wants to. It isn't about good and evil. Not to Her.

"I'm going to need you both to trust Me."

She holds out a hand, open-palmed, to each of them. 

Aziraphale draws a breath, slow and deep, and lets it out in a tired sigh. He looks at Crowley in a way that he hopes will convey everything he can't put to words — _I've let you down so often. And I'm sorry._

Crowley gazes back at him, breaking eye contact only for a split second to glance down at Her hand. He seems to be waiting on Aziraphale for some indication of what to do next. Holding hands with the Almighty wasn't anywhere on his list of things to do with Aziraphale for their anniversary, but here they are regardless of anyone's preference.

Aziraphale feels the tears rising, clouding his eyes. He lifts his chin to keep them back, to safeguard them from falling. And then he reaches out, and takes Her offered hand.

"All right, then," Crowley says. "I trust you." 

He says it to Aziraphale, not to God, but She seems to accept it all the same. Crowley grasps Her other hand.

"All faithfulness cuts at the heart," She says, "and splits it in two. That which is chosen, and that which is left behind."

Her words are the catalyst, sparking magic and bringing something forth to thrum in the air in front of them. Crowley turns his head, tearing his eyes from Aziraphale. He cries out with a sound of dismay, mournful like a broken sob. 

Aziraphale forces himself to look even though he doesn't want to. There, spiraling before his eyes, is a disc of flame. And in front of Crowley, a small whirlpool, twisting as it moves. Holy water and hellfire.

"Oh," he says. It's to be an execution then, after all. 

"Now," She says. "Just hold on tight. It will only hurt a moment and then it won't."

Moving as one, the water and fire fly towards them, striking and passing through. It feels rather like being shot.

Aziraphale is the first to open his eyes again, once the deed is done. He sees his hand still holding Hers, together engulfed in flame. She lets go and the fire stays with him, raging but not devouring. On her left side, Crowley lifts his hand to examine the sheen of water.

"What the fuck?" he says.

They're both alive and quite undamaged. A wave of relief washes through him, and Aziraphale laughs. 

"In my case, I believe _what the Hell_ is a titch more accurate." 

He wiggles his fingers at Crowley. They're still on fire and still beautifully, miraculously unharmed.

Crowley flicks holy water at him and smiles.

"Play with it later, please," the Almighty says, but She's smiling, too. 

She flexes Her fingers once and the flame goes out, a second time and the water evaporates. It isn't gone though. Aziraphale can feel it within him, the newly shaped power to call it forth at will. It's an astonishing gift.

"As you may have guessed," She says, "Heaven and Hell are going to figure out that you tricked them. And now it doesn't matter. This will keep you both safe — so that when the time comes, you can assist Me by talking everyone else down from their next big fight. Think you can handle it?"

"When the time comes?" Aziraphale asks at the same time Crowley answers, "Sounds fair to me."

She reaches into the tote bag again and pulls out a book. 

"Here," She says and hands it to Aziraphale. "I made notes in the margins." 

"You did what?!"

"And one more thing..." With a wave of Her hand, She channels power all around them. It moves like a great swirling vortex of wind. "Don't destroy My other angels and demons. But go ahead and frighten them all you like."

And with that, the garden disappears, replaced by a blinding light.

* * *

The light fades. She's sent them back, but not to the bookshop. They're standing in the quiet dark of Crowley's flat. Aziraphale grips the book in his hands, while Crowley braces himself against the wall. A minute passes, maybe two, and finally Aziraphale threads his thoughts together and puts them into words.

"Are you all right?"

"'M fine," Crowley says. "You?"

"As well as can be expected." 

"Yeah, it's been a day." Crowley sounds exhausted — not exactly surprising. The day has been one shock after another. That takes its toll, even on a pair of powerful immortals.

"She isn't on Heaven's side, after all. That's interesting." Aziraphale looks down at the book, turns it over in his hands, and runs his fingers along the spine.

"She's on Her own side," Crowley says. "I suppose She has to be."

"You know if you ever want to talk about it — the first war, I mean, and everything to do with, well, with Falling — I can listen, you know."

"Maybe sometime," Crowley says, shrugging it off like always. "I dunno. It was a long time ago. What's the book?"

"Oh," Aziraphale says. "Let's see." 

The outer cover is unmarked, bereft of words. He flips it open to find the title page. A slip of paper falls out and flutters to the floor. Aziraphale bends to pick it up. It's just a small note, but the penmanship is breathtaking, clearly written by a master calligrapher. Aziraphale reads it aloud.

"Note to Self. Good poet: Hirshfield. Major themes: love, loss, knowledge and consequence, the passage of time, that which binds us, the death of God, finding the divine in the ordinary. Recommend to: yoga instructor, beekeeper at the farmer's market (the one who sells the tote bags), pair of angels."

He raises his eyebrows at that. "I suppose that's us. Pair of angels?"

"Pair of something." Crowley snaps his fingers, sets one hand on fire while the other is engulfed in a sphere of water. He examines them both, and then tries to bring his hands together. The water and flame don't seem to appreciate it. They hiss and sputter away from each other. 

Crowley frowns and extinguishes them both. 

"I'm going to open that bottle," he says, pointing with his thumb in the direction of the kitchen behind him. "The red I've been saving."

Aziraphale nods. "I'll have a glass."

Then he turns his attention back to the book. It's not actually one of his. He doesn't recognize it at all — and he'd certainly remember if he'd ever owned a volume of poetry with a title like this one. _Of Gravity & Angels_. 

He flips through it. The margins overflow with vibrant little sketches of creatures great and small, nestled alongside notes and musings, penned in the same flowing script as the Note to Self. Aziraphale takes it all in very quickly, only pausing for a moment when the words of a poem, underlined, catch his attention — _Cleave to this, though faithfulness, all faithfulness, cuts at the heart..._

He shuts the book and sends it away to his desk at the bookshop. He'll read it later. For now — well, he's spent more than enough time trying to decipher the Will of the Almighty for one day. 

But, as it turns out, She's not entirely through with him. 

Crowley returns from the kitchen with a pair of wine glasses — and something else that he fishes from his pocket after he's handed over the glass of wine. It's a small, rectangular object.

"Magnet," Crowley says.

"Oh, look," Aziraphale says. "That's my butterfly. The fat little brown one, from when She asked me to choose my favorite."

It's the type of thing sold at a museum gift shop: a slab of clear glass backed by a slender magnet, with the photo of the butterfly pasted between the two layers.

"Found it on my refrigerator along with this." He dips into his pocket again and retrieves a folded piece of paper.

"Read it, if you want to." Crowley hands it over, then raises his glass, and downs half of its contents in one swift gulp.

It's no way to savor a fine vintage. Aziraphale gives him a look, but otherwise refrains from criticism. He unfolds the slip of paper and tilts it to catch more of the light. It doesn't surprise him in the least to see the same infallibly beautiful script as before. He clears his throat and begins to read.

_"Hello, you two! I know you had plans today, but Mine were more important and that's The Truth. Thanks for putting up with Me all the same."_

"It's signed with an elaborate sigil," Aziraphale says, "and then there's a postscript: _Happy anniversary — to you and to the world._ "

Crowley is quiet for a moment. He takes another sip from his glass, and then sighs. 

"I don't think I can forgive Her."

He's an immortal entity in the body of a middle-aged person. And yet, in the dim light of his flat, he looks young and human and terribly vulnerable.

"Oh, my dearest." Aziraphale spends a miracle, sends away the note and magnet — his wine glass, too. He takes three steps, closes the distance between them, and places his hand on Crowley's chest, above his heart. "You don't ever have to."

"You really mean that." It doesn't sound like a question. There's a solidness, an undeniable certainty in Crowley's words.

"I do."

Crowley's gaze lingers a moment, serious and thoughtful. 

"Thank you," he says.

"Honestly," Aziraphale says. "I ought to be thanking you for forgiving _me_."

He starts to pull his hand away, but Crowley catches it and holds it in place, still anchored just above his heart. 

"I swear, angel, if this is about the bandstand again–"

"Of course it is."

Crowley shakes his head. He's smiling in that amused, familiar way — like he knows things Aziraphale will never guess and he's just _delighted_ to be the clever one this time. He leans closer and whispers.

"I like the bandstand."

"You can't–"

"Why can't I?"

Aziraphale smiles, but it's sad, a half-hearted thing accompanied by an ache of shame and regret. "I pushed you away from me. And I said it was over."

"And that hurt. It did. But it didn't hurt like Falling."

And there it is, the enormous weighty thing that sits between them. It's a subject too closely connected to God. And so they never talk about it, not outright. Not like this — standing in the corridor of Crowley's flat, looking at each other so plainly, with neither one of them glancing away or changing the subject. 

"Oh." Aziraphale's voice is soft.

"I mean, how could it? You didn't leave me alone, in pain and darkness, only to show up _today_ — with an explanation and no apology — when it was already too late and too broken. You came right back to me. You chose this." He presses Aziraphale's hand more firmly to his chest. "This thing I felt but never dared to say out loud. Not for thousands of years. So, yeah, angel, I'm fond of that bandstand. That's where I named it for the first time: our own side. Yours and mine."

A shiver runs through him and Aziraphale releases a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.

"I didn't ever think of it that way."

"S'all right."

They stand, in shared silence, for several minutes more. Crowley's chest falls and then rises, over and over again, as the breath moves through him. Aziraphale feels its rhythm, slow and calming above the gentle twitch of Crowley's heartbeat. He's loathe to move his hand. 

But he doesn't have to worry. As afternoon fades into evening, he finds that Crowley wants the same thing he wants — close proximity, affectionate touch, and a quiet night in bed. He falls asleep with Crowley's arms around him, steadied and comforted by the pace of his breath.

* * *

_Epilogue_

Aziraphale wakes early, and finds himself all alone in bed. Concerned, he gets up to search the flat, but he doesn't need to look far.

Crowley is in his study, seated on his ridiculous gilded throne — only comfortable because of the miracle in place to make it so. He leans forward, elbows on the table, and all his attention focused on his index fingers. One is in flames, while the other is coated with a swirl of water in constant motion. He eases the tips of his fingers towards each other. Once again, water and fire sputter as they come into contact, hissing away from each other.

"No. Do better," Crowley says and there's a warning in his voice.

"Oh, I don't think that's wise," Aziraphale says.

Crowley looks up to see him standing in the doorway.

"Shows what you know," he says. "Watch this." 

A flick of his fingers sends them loose into a ball of water and another of flame. With a twist of each hand, he sets them twirling, each rotating on its own axis. They tilt towards each other, slow at first and then gaining speed. Instead of impact and explosion, they fall into orbit, circling and circling. 

Then he raises both his index fingers and the spinning orbs change into snaking figures, twining up and around each other in a helix, like the very fabric of life itself. Crowley closes his hands together slowly, fingers laced as if in prayer. In response, the twisting lines of fire and water merge into a single column of brilliance that sparkles like water in sunlight and moves like the lick of a flame. 

Crowley unlaces his fingers, flexes his right hand, and the spire of water-flame flies back to cover his hand like a shimmering glove. 

"Oh!" Aziraphale says, quite in awe of the beauty and cleverness of it.

"Seems they don't like being forced," Crowley says. "But if you move them slow and kind of dance them around each other, you can tempt them into this." He wiggles his fingers and grins. "Well, you can if you're us."

"Show me how?"

"Come here," Crowley says. "You'll like it."

The seat of his throne expands by miracle, reshaping itself into an ostentatious bench. 

Aziraphale sits down to join him. Before he turns all his attention to Crowley, he takes a moment to run his fingers along the gilded arm of the bench. It's not to soothe anxiety this time. He feels perfectly at ease. It's simply a reminder that he's here — safely held to the earth — where he belongs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book of poetry referenced is _Of Gravity & Angels_ by Jane Hirshfield. Her poetry has spoken to me since I was a teenager. 
> 
> From that book, the titular poem, Of Gravity & Angels, gets referenced indirectly in my fic. Another poem, Doppelgänger, is the one that's quoted briefly. (I'll add the text of the poems to the comments below.) But really, go read all of Hirshfield's poetry.
> 
> Thank you for reading. You can find me on [tumblr](http://fancytrinkets.tumblr.com/), in case that's a thing you do.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Gravity and angels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23141356) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




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